Rise of the Roman Republic
The period of the Rise of the Roman Republic lasted from about 280 BC until 134 BC. It began with the struggle that completed the conquest of the Italian peninsula. It then ended with a Roman empire that stretched from Spain to Africa to Greece. At the start of more than a hundred and fifty years of war, Carthage was the dominant power in the western Mediterranean, and the Greek Hellenistic states the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean. By the end of the struggle, the Carthaginian Empire had been annexed, and the waning of Greece and the waxing of Rome had been confirmed. History Pyrrhic War After five decades of struggle, all that now stood between the Roman Republic and an Italian wide empire, were the independent but divided Greek cities of Magna Graecia in the far south. Rome began interfering in the Greek colonies internal squabbles, hoping to play the cities off one another. When a minor diplomatic dispute erupted into open warfare, the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC), the colonies appealed to Greece for military aid. They were answered by King Pyrrhus of Epirus, an ambitious military-adventurer and veteran of the dynastic wars following the death of Alexander the Great. Pyrrhus sails in 281 BC with some 25,000 men and 20 elephants, the first to be seen in Italy. In his first two battles, at Heraclea and Asculum, he was victorious. Nonetheless, the Romans were stubborn in defeat, withdrawing in good order, while Pyrrhus suffered unacceptably heavy losses; giving rise to the term “Pyrrhic Victory” to describe a success with no profit. Pyrrhus withdrew to Sicily but returned in 275 BC. While the Battle of Beneventum was indecisive, with his army exhausted, Pyrrhus withdrew completely from Italy. Rome had shown herself capable of pitting her armies against the Greeks, the dominant military powers of the Mediterranean. The dismissal of Pyrrhus and their subsequent capture of Magna Graecia, sent a clear message to the Mediterranean world; there was a new major power in the west. First Punic War The Roman Republic had secured complete control over Italy, and somewhat inevitably, she soon came into conflict with the other great power in the western Mediterranean, Carthage. The Carthaginians were a Phoenician trade-based empire, and the leading navel and economic power in the west. From her capital Carthage in modern day Tunisia, its territories stretched from southern Spain to Lebanon. They also had colonies right on Rome’s doorstep in western Sicily, an exceptionally fertile island, later known as the “bread basket of Rome”. Sicily was disputed between Carthaginians settlements at its western end, and the Greek colonies of Syracuse and Messina in the east. Rome's involvement began with a request for help from the Greek colony of Messina. The inhabitants turn out to be uncertain whether they needed help mainly against the Carthaginians or against their neighbouring Greeks in Syracuse under the ambitious tyrant Hiero II. The conflict quickly escalates into a straight clash between Rome and Carthage, the First Punic War (264-241 BC); the term Punic comes from the Latin word for Phoenician. Rome forced Hiero into a reluctant alliance, and soon proved herself the power in land engagements, after victory at the Battle of Agrigentum (262 BC). Nonetheless, to defeat this new enemy, naval power was also necessary. Thus Rome drastically expanded its navy in a very short space of time, by copying from a captured Carthaginian example. Despite some early calamities, Rome won its first major naval engagement at the Battle of Mylae (260 BC). Years of inconclusive fighting followed, on and around Sicily. Then in 256 BC, the Romans decided that the time had come to invade Carthage herself. At first the Roman invasion was successful, forcing Carthage to sue for peace. However, the overeager Romans set such preposterous demands, that the Carthaginians inevitably rejected them. In desperation, the Carthaginians hired the Spartan mercenary general named Xanthippus to reorganize their army. The resurgent Carthaginians under Xanthippus’ brilliant leadership then delivered a crushing defeat to the Romans at the Battle of Tunis (255 BC). A new stalemate ensued with the Carthaginians still fighting a guerilla war in Sicily, but with the Romans now controlling the sea around the island, the last holdouts were eventually starved out in 241 BC. With troubles brewing for both of them at home, peace was agreed; Cartage seeded Sicily to Rome, the first rich overseas province of the Roman Empire. Second Punic War During the intervening 20 years until the next conflict, Rome was not idle: it dealt with the pirates that had been plaguing the Adriatic Sea from Illyria (north-west of the Greek city-states); added Corsica and Sardinia to its empire; and also defeated the Gauls occupying the Po valley, extending Roman control to the Alps. However, they looked on with alarm as the Carthaginians began conquering half of Spain, including its valuable silver deposits. The speed with which the crisis escalated into war suggests that both sides regard another conflict as inevitable. When the Carthaginians extended their control of Spain to the city of Saguntum on the east coast, a city with friendly relations with Rome, the Romans used it as a pretext for renewing the war; the Second Punic War (218–201 BC). The Romans began assembling a two pronged invasion of Africa and Spain, but it was the young governor of Spain, Hannibal Barca, who took the initiative first. His father had been the general commanding the last Carthaginian holdouts in Sicily during the First Punic War, and he harboured a burning hatred for the Romans. Hannibal amassed a powerful army of 90,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry and 67 war-elephants, all veterans of the campaigns in Spain. He then did the unthinkable, audaciously marching from Spain through hostile southern Gaul and over the treacherous peaks of the Alps, fighting angry local tribes all the way. The Romans were in disbelief when a Carthaginian army emerged from the mountains, albeit just one-third of the force that set-off from Spain. After a brief rest, he promptly defeated the two Roman legions stationed to defend the region from the Gauls. Hannibal’s campaigns in Italy would earn him the reputation as one of the greatest military strategists in history. He met and decisively defeated the Roman army that had been redirected from the African invasion at the Battle of the Trebia (218 BC). He then did the same at the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC). With each victory, large numbers of Gauls joined with Hannibal, reinforcing his losses. Faced with this crisis, the Senate appointed a dictator, Quintus Fabius Maximus. Fabius had a different strategy, a strategy that still bears his name, a strategy that everyone in Rome hated: to avoid battle in favour of wearing down Hannibal through a war of attrition. Although the strategy would ultimately work, the deeply unpopular Fabius was soon ousted from power; making a mockery of the office of dictator. The return to more aggressive tactics would lead to Hannibal’s coup-de-grace; the Battle of Cannae (216 BC). In one of the most famous battles in all of military history, Hannibal’s near perfect tactics crushed a Roman army twice as large as his own. Nonetheless, Cannae would prove the high point of Hannibal’s adventures in Italy. He had proven himself the superior in military tactics, so the Romans returned to Fabius’ attritional strategy; keeping armies in the field to limit Hannibal’s movements, but avoiding open battle. For ten long years, Hannibal remained in Italy, trying to urge Italian city-states to revolt against Rome. He would sometimes succeed like in Capua though it was quickly flipped back, and almost again in Tarentum though a stubborn legion held out in the citadel until reinforced. These failures to secure a safe Italian port would prevent Carthage from ever properly reinforcing his forces. Hannibal became like a bull in the ring, tormented by lesser beings while his strength slowly ebbed away. With a stalemate in Italy, the war was forced to seek other arenas. In Sicily, with the death of Hiero II in 215 BC, Syracuse revolted and allied with Carthage, but was eventually recaptured under siege three years later. In Macedonia, Carthage allied with King Philip V who threatened to invade Italy also, the First Macedon War (214–205 BC). However shrewd Roman diplomacy managed to agitate several of the independent Greek city-states against him, keeping Philip tied up in Greece for the duration of the war. The tide of the war would turn in Spain, with Rome’s own young military rock star, Publius Scipio; later known as the towering figure of Roman history, Scipio Africanus. A Roman expedition force had been sent to Spain in 218 BC under Scipio’s father and uncle, to bog down the Carthaginian forces there under Hasdrubal. After 7 long-years it finally met with defeat. In 210 BC, Scipio offered to take up the command with 10,000 re-enforcements. With cunning and imagination, Scipio did the last thing anyone would have expected of him; he evaded Hasdrubal’s army, and sacked the capital of Spain, Cartagena. This act gained for Scipio many new allies from the tribes in Spain. Scipio eventually brilliantly crushed the main Carthaginian army in Spain at the Battle of Ilipa (206 BC). Meanwhile, Hasdrubal himself had made another expedition across Gaul into Italy to try and reinforce Hannibal. However, on reaching Italy but before they could join up, he was defeated at the Battle of the Metaurus (207 BC) after the Romans force-marched an army 300 miles in 7 days from the foot of Italy. Now, Scipio returned to Italy to plan another invasion of north Africa. The Romans landed in 203 BC, and took the Carthaginian city of Utica. He then began peeling off Carthaginian allies, most notably their Numidian cavalry. Convinced that it was her only hope, Carthage recalled Hannibal to defend his native city. The two greatest generals of their day finally came face-to-face upon the soil of Africa, at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. Scipio was a great admirer of Hannibal and had studied his tactics carefully. For Hannibal, his own veterans were much reduced, and the new armies of Carthage were ill-trained and passionless. At Zama BC, Scipio neutralised Hannibal’s elephant charge by leaving spaces between his line, and the battle turned into a clash of brute force. Hannibal was defeated, and the Carthaginian army annihilated. The war was over, and Carthage accepted punishing peace terms, ceding Spain to the Romans, as the province of Hispania. Rome in Greece After the exhausting and massively destructive conflict of the Second Punic War, getting embroiled in the cut-throat world of Greek-power-politics really should have been the last thing on Roman minds. The rulers of Alexander’s Hellenistic Empire were in almost constant conflict with each other and with their neighbours over territory in the eastern Mediterranean. During the Second Punic War, alliances with the independent Greek city-states had helped keep Macedonia out of the war. Macedonia was once again in expansionist mood in Greece, and when diplomacy failed to halt it, Rome declared war; the Second Macedonian War (200–197 BC). The Romans decisively defeated Macedonia at the Battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC), confirming once and for all the waning of Greece and the waxing of Rome. Macedonia was forced to give up her recent conquests, and the Romans withdrew from Greece, dramatically announcing: all Greek states was now free, under Rome’s protection. With Macedonia weakened, the Seleucid Persian Empire inevitably began making increasingly aggressive manoeuvres towards Greece, leading to the Roman–Seleucid War (192–188 BC). Rome mobilized a massive force under the great hero of the Second Punic War, Scipio Africanus, and set out for Greece. The Seleucids tried to turn Roman strength against them at the Battle of Thermopylae (191 BC), the site of the last stand of the 300 Spartans, but, like the Spartans, the Seleucids lost. Then, the Romans pursued the Seleucids into Anatolia, and crushed them at the Battle of Magnesia (190 BC). In the aftermath, Rome again withdrew from Greece, but was forced to intervene on several occasions against Macedonia, apparently with reluctance. Finally in 147 BC, their patience was at an end, Macedonia was annexed as a province; from it a loose control was exercised over the rest of mainland Greece and the Aegean. End of Carthage Around the same time occurred the last act of Rome’s great struggle with Carthage; the Third Punic War (149–146 BC). Carthage was a shadow of her former self, having given up all dreams of empire, but true to their Phoenician origins, its commercial enterprises were flourishing. Carthage must be destroyed became the obsessive refrain of Cato, a leading senator in Rome. Rome used a minor Carthaginian border disputes as an excuse to claim a breach in the peace treaty. This war was a minor affair. Carthage attempted at once to come to terms, but rejected Rome’s preposterous demand to abandon their home city. The city's defences were so strong, and the resistance of the Carthaginians so desperate, that the siege lasted for three years. When Carthage was finally starved into submission in 146 BC, a population of 250,000 has been reduced to 50,000; these poor survivors were sold into slavery. Carthage was razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and rubble. After the fall, the province of Africa (modern day Tunisia and western Libya) was added to the Roman Empire. Developments Category:Historical Periods